The Pointer Sisters — Dare Me

JUL 01 1985 · 12:00

The Pointer Sisters — Dare Me (1985) Director: Michael Chapman & Richard Perry Era: Mid-Eighties MTV Pop/R&B Crossover (1985) - Peak era of synth-driven R&B dance crossovers, high-concept music video production, and Hollywood cinematographers entering the music video space Exceptionally high. This video is a rare convergence of New Hollywood cinematographic prestige (Michael Chapman, Raging Bull DP), deliberate intertextual location production, and gender-subversive performance at a moment when R&B and dance music were reshaping mainstream pop. Its warm, film-originated visual quality and fast MTV-era cutting rhythm make it a textbook artifact of mid-80s crossover music video craft. The boxing gym setting and male-drag costuming give it lasting iconographic and cultural studies value beyond its chart success. Context: Released in 1985 as the lead single from the Pointer Sisters' platinum album Contact, 'Dare Me' arrived at the apex of MTV's transformation of pop music marketing. The video's deployment of Michael Chapman — the Oscar-nominated cinematographer of Raging Bull — to direct a music video at the same Main Street Gym used in Scorsese's film represents a notable collision of New Hollywood cinematic prestige with the emerging music video industrial complex. The gender-subversive visual conceit of the Sisters in male drag scouting boxing talent added a layer of performative camp and female agency rarely seen in mainstream R&B videos of the period. The song became the group's sole Billboard Dance Club Songs chart-topper, cementing their crossover appeal across R&B, pop, and dance formats simultaneously. Director notes: The video was shot at the Main Street Gym in Los Angeles, the same location used for boxing sequences in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), for which Chapman had served as Director of Photography. This constitutes a deliberate intertextual production choice: the cinematographer of Raging Bull co-directing the Pointer Sisters video in the same physical space. Chapman co-directed with record producer Richard Perry. The video features the Pointer Sisters performing in male drag as boxing scouts, engaging with the gym environment. Production companies credited on IMDB are Pendulum Productions and Planet Video. Steven Bauer appears in the video, as does Mark Breland.